What You See Is What You Get? Images of Central and Eastern Europe in Managerial Discourses since 1990

BV042593903

Depkat, Volker

Steger, Thomas

2015

IOS-Mitteilungen

65

https://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/publikationen/mitteilungen/mitt_65.pdf

https://langzeitarchivierung.bib-bvb.de:443/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE2561098

https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-63321-8

Arbeitsbereich Geschichte

IOS Mitteilungen

No. 65 April 2015

What You See Is What You Get?
Images of Central and Eastern Europe
in Managerial Discourses since 1990
Volker Depkat* and Thomas Steger**

* University of Regensburg, Department
93053 Regensburg, Germany, Phone:
** (Corresponding Author), University
Organization, Universitätsstr. 31, 93053
Email: thomas.steger@ur.de.

of British and American Studies, Universitätsstr. 31,
+49 – 941 – 943 34 76, Email: volker.depkat@ur.de;
of Regensburg, Department of Leadership and
Regensburg, Germany, Phone: +49 – 941 – 943 26 81,

Landshuter Straße 4
D-93047 Regensburg
Telefon: (09 41) 943 54-10
Telefax: (09 41) 943 54-27
E-Mail: info@ios-regensburg.de
Internet: www.ios-regensburg.de
ISSN: 2363-4898

Contents
Abstract ......................................................................................................................... v
1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
2. Theoretical Background ........................................................................................... 3
3. State of Literature .................................................................................................... 7
4. Methods ................................................................................................................. 11
5. Findings ................................................................................................................. 12
5.1 The Self and the Other .................................................................................... 12
5.2 Certainty vs. Uncertainty ................................................................................. 15
5.3 Universalism vs. Particularism of Practices .................................................... 18
5.4 Knowledge and Learning ................................................................................ 21
6. Discussion ............................................................................................................. 25
7. References ............................................................................................................ 29
8. Annex: Article Database (in chronological order) .................................................. 31
8.1 Academy of Management Executive (17) ....................................................... 31
8.2 Academy of Management Journal (12) ........................................................... 32
8.3 European Management Journal (13) .............................................................. 32

iii

iv

Abstract
Drawing on a systematic close reading of all relevant articles published in three leading
management journals since 1990, the paper analyzes the images of Central and Eastern
Europe (CEE) circulating in the business community at the turn of the twenty-first century.
It suggests that a mere stocktaking of Western perceptions of ‘the East’ is not enough,
arguing that CEE images in the post-Cold War managerial discourses should be analyzed in
both their cultural embeddedness and their epistemological function for the construction of
knowledge about CEE. The methodological approach combines a poststructuralist discourse
analysis with imagological theories originating in the field of literary criticism to
reconstruct the images CEE and investigate into their communicative function in processes
of managerial meaning-making and knowledge construction. As such, the paper aims at an
analysis of managerial meta-discourses and the very premises and assumptions that
generated them.

Keywords: managerial discourses, Central and Eastern Europe, publications,
management journals

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1. Introduction
Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Cold War empire, Western managers
started debating the business options opening up in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) –
i.e. the former socialist countries of the Eastern ‘bloc’ in Europe. In trying to assess the
possible success of direct investments, joint ventures, and business takeovers, Western
business elites reflected the character and direction of the historical transformations
underway, described CEE business practices and habits, analyzed the national cultures
and characters in this region of the world, and tried to predict the future course of
economic developments there. These debates were tied inseparably to the question of
how Western corporate leadership and governance could be applied to the transitional
economies in the former Eastern bloc, what Western businesses and managers could do
to engineer the economic, political and cultural changes there, and what the social
responsibility of corporations in this process was.
While these debates were scientific insofar as they moved in the framework of
international business (IB) theories, drew on empirical data, and were published in
scholarly journals read by the community of academics, they were not exclusively
generated from a scientific quest for ‘facts’ and ‘knowledge’. Rather, culturally
embedded images and stereotypes about CEE, some of them centuries old, structured,
informed and shaped the representation of CEE-realities in these academic journals. At
the same time, the representations of CEE-reality were inextricably linked to images of
the ‘West’ and preconceived notions of ‘Western identity.’ Thus, in debating the
economic chances in CEE and defining Western businesses’ role(s) in the economic
transition process, Western managers were not only constructing outside views on CEE
business and management, they were also describing themselves and their own
managerial culture in one and the same process. In short, while they were assessing
business options in CEE, Western managers were not only constructing a CEE ‘other’,
they were also imagining ‘the West’ as a coherent cultural entity. In the course of these
highly complex communicative processes, theoretical and practical key concepts of
Western free-market capitalism like entrepreneurship and competition, incentive and

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IOS Mitteilung No. 65

accountability, efficiency and quality were taken for granted. The very premises and the
cultural embeddedness of IB theory and practices were not problematized.
Drawing on a systematic close reading of all relevant articles published in three
leading management journals since 1990 (Academy of Management Executive, Academy
of Management Journal, and European Management Journal), the paper analyzes the
images of CEE circulating in the business community at the turn of the twenty-first
century. Doing so, this paper investigates the following questions:
1. Which images of CEE circulating in the managerial discourses can be identified?
What are their central elements? What are recurring patterns in the Western
perception of the CEE other?
2. Which concepts and core values of IB theories and practice help generate these
images, and which notions of Western business identity are written into the
managerial images of CEE?
3. How do these images of CEE serve as arguments for certain business strategies
pursued in CEE? How do they inform the business practices of Western companies
in the former Eastern bloc?
This paper suggests that a descriptive reconstruction of images of CEE in their
content, and a mere stocktaking of Western perceptions of ‘the East’ is not enough.
Rather, it argues that the images should be analyzed in both their cultural
embeddedness and their epistemological function for the construction of knowledge
about CEE in post-Cold-War managerial worlds. The discursive creation of mental
maps and the positioning of CEE on them shaped the way in which Western
businesses acted in the post-Cold-War CEE contexts in many respects. By
investigating the function of the images of CEE in processes of managerial meaningmaking from 1990 to the present, the paper thus aims at an analysis of managerial
meta-discourses and the very premises and assumptions that generated and
structured them.

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Images of Central and Eastern Europe

2. Theoretical Background
This paper takes a cultural approach to IB theory and practice, capitalizing on recent
theoretical developments inspired by the cultural turn in the humanities (BachmannMedick, 2009; Bogards, 2010; Burke, 2004; Maurer, 2008). The concept of the cultural
turn refers to a wide variety of theories, conceptual frameworks and approaches, which
are used differently in different academic disciplines for different purposes and to
different effects. Yet, as different as they may be, all cultural approaches in one way or
another are interested in the genesis and transformation of culturally constructed
systems of knowledge and processes of meaning-making that, in providing for
orientation vis-á-vis the world, structure social practices and motivate human behavior.
As such, many approaches in the field of cultural studies are deeply indebted to a
sociology of knowledge and the “social construction of reality” as laid down by Alfred
Schütz (1979/1984), Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman (1966).
Not surprisingly, recent cultural approaches have put a great emphasis on social
communication as the generator of meaning- and knowledge systems. By social
communication we mean that set of communicative practices through which social
groups reach an understanding about who they are, and who they want to be, who
belongs to them, and who does not, what they hold to be ‘good’ and ‘bad’, what they
like and what they do not like (Depkat, 2003; Depkat, 2014). These debates emerge
from highly controversial and interest-driven quests of social groups to interpret the
world they live in as meaningful, which, in turn, is the condition of possibility to act
‘meaningfully’ in this world in the first place. Cultural approaches, therefore,
conceptualize the relationship between knowledge and behavior as being inherently
cyclical insofar as socially constructed systems of meaning trigger and motivate certain
behavior, while, at the same time, these systems of meaning are the result of time- and
culture-specific sets of social practices serving to either stabilize or destabilize the very
systems of meaning enveloping them.
There are, of course, many theoretical approaches to the study of social
communication, ranging from Niklas Luhmann’s systems’ theory to Jürgen Habermas’
hermeneutic approach introducing “Lebenswelt” (life world) as a communicative

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IOS Mitteilung No. 65

paradigm (Luhmann, 1984, 1997; Habermas, 1981). However, to analyze the communicative functions of CEE-images for the construction of knowledge about that world
region in the managerial debates since the Cold War, this paper combines critical
discourse analysis inspired by the philosophical work of Michel Foucault with
imagological theories originating in the field of literary studies.
Discourse analysis, which is widely identified with the work of the poststructuralist
philosopher Michel Foucault, is not a method per se but a set of epistemological
premises and philosophical concepts that defines how we analyze forms of speech
(Foucault, 1969; Foucault, 1971; Howard, 2000; Landwehr, 2009; Mills, 2010; Sarasin,
2003). The approach takes the materiality of language as the point of analytical
departure, and proceeds to the institutional, political, social and economic conditions of
possibility of concrete statements made in specific historical context. Understanding
discourse as an institutionalized form of speech, discourse analysis is interested in the
actual use of words on the textual surface, and strives to unearth the order, regularities
and rules of language usage, which, however, are not just grammatically defined but
also socially, institutionally, and historically.
Discourse analysis is never just interested in one single statement but in the relation
of one statement to other statements made and the power-driven social practices that let
them surface in the first place. Always starting with the concrete usage of words and
other non-verbal signs on the surface level, discourse analysis moves on to reflect
individual statements as integral parts of larger discursive constellations as carriers of
knowledge of the time. A discourse, therefore, is understood to be a time-specific
configuration of interconnected statements, verbal and non-verbal in nature that carries
strands of the socially constructed knowledge of a certain social group at a certain time.
In this context, a key issue of discourse analysis is the relationship between
knowledge, truth and social power, which is seen to be inherently cyclical. On the one
hand, the discourses of a time are understood to be power-driven, which means that
knowledge always has a social base, and is, therefore, not removed from the interests,
perceptions, and cultural conditioning of the actors involved in a discourse. On the
other hand, and this goes way beyond the Marxist Überbau-Unterbau-concept of

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ideology as ‘false consciousness’ veiling the material base of power relationships,
discourses are seen as not only ‘mirroring’ social power relationships but also as
actually producing them by defining what is true and false, what is right and wrong,
what is normal and deviant.
As such, a discourse in the eyes of discourse analysts is a social fact in and by itself
subordinating the participants in the discourse to its very rules and regularities
defining what can be said in a certain context, and, just as important, who can say that.
Discourse analysis thus does away with the notion of the autonomous communicative
subject, and replaces it with two new categories, i.e. the dispositif and the archive.
While the archive is the system of rules and regulations defining the inner order of a
discourse, the dispositif is the apparatus of institutional, physical and administrative
mechanisms that connects the various actors and elements to form a discourse.
Foucault defines the dispositif as a
“thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural
forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements,
philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the
unsaid. […] The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between
these elements.” (Foucault, 1980: 194).

Continuously interacting, archive and dispositif regulate what can and what cannot
be said at a given time in a certain politico-social context. A discourse analysis
centering in the categories of archive and dispositif, therefore, will not primarily be
interested in the content and the subjective meaning of statements and their relationship
to some outer reality but rather analyze the surfacing of statements in a certain place at a
given time in their regularity and power-driven historical condition of possibility.
Discourse analysis opens up a new take on the analysis of images about other
countries and cultures. It suggests that they should no longer be primarily analyzed in
terms of how ‘realistic’ they are, i.e. how much they are in keeping with the ‘realities’
in the countries and culture they describe. While this does not mean that one should
stop asking these questions altogether, discourse analysis encourages us to take the
study of images further to identify their communicate function for the social

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construction of reality. This paper, therefore, suggests complementing discourse
analysis with imagolocial approaches from the field of literary criticism. Literary
imagology as pioneered by Hugo Dyserinck, Manfred S. Fischer, Waldemar
Zacharasiewicz, and others, has moved well beyond the descriptive reconstruction of
how members of one culture perceived other countries, regions and peoples (Beller,
Agazzi, & Calzoni, 2006; Dukić, 2012; Fischer, 1981; Zacharasiewicz 2010). Rather,
they are systematically asking for the notions of the self not only written into but also
constructed by the very representation of other countries, regions and peoples.
Imagological approaches thus center in the premise that notions of the ‘self’ are
always dependent on the construction of ‘significant others’ that are ‘significant’
insofar as they in one way or another serve to construct and uphold one’s sense of
identity. In sum, this suggests that images of other countries, regions, cultures and
peoples are hardly ever disinterested representations of reality as it actually is but
rather culturally conditioned and interest driven discursive constructions that serve
identity-purposes.
Analyzing images of CEE in the managerial discourses from 1990 to the present
thus encourages self-reflection about the very premises that shaped Western
business perspectives on CEE in the post-Cold War world. It asks for the (cultural)
condition of possibility of corporate leadership, governance and corporate social
responsibility in the CEE contexts and it contributes to reaching a greater clarity
about the situation businesses and managers were and are acting in. This selfreflexive clarity, in turn, seems to be the precondition for improving processes of
corporate decision-making.

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Images of Central and Eastern Europe

3. State of Literature
The paper contributes to the problem of management in the transitional economies of
CEE, which has generated a considerable number of scholarly publications. We note the
special issues or symposia of prestigious journals dedicated to this topic (e.g.,
International Studies of Management and Organization, Organization Studies, European
Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of International
Business Studies, and Journal of Management Studies). Furthermore, numerous edited
volumes, books, and book series by prominent publishers (e.g. Ashgate, Edgar Elgar,
Palgrave) have been issued. Last but not least, a few journals with particular focus on
CEE countries or management issues in emerging economies were founded, such as
Journal of East-West Business (1995), Journal of East European Management Studies
(1996), and Baltic Journal of Management (2006).
It is not surprising, therefore, that several authors have reflected upon and have tried
to summarize the research output in this field: In a rather early review, Banaj (1994)
concluded that US scholars were dominant in the field. Interestingly, this finding has
remained widely undisputed and hardly explored in the following years. Alt and Lang
(2004) have basically confirmed this finding in their (particular) review on research
about East Germany. Gelbuda, Meyer and Delios (2008) mentioned that researchers
with a CEE heritage increasingly participated in international academic discourses and,
thus, have contributed to a merger of (local) context knowledge and (Western)
methodological know-how. Steger and Lang (2011) confirmed this but, at the same
time, highlighted the endurance of Western, particularly US, dominance in the field.
With respect to theoretical and paradigmatic fundaments, Hoskisson, Eden, Lau,
and Wright (2000) argued that institutional theory has first become most relevant
when markets emerged. As markets matured, transaction cost economics and,
subsequently, the resource-based view of the firm gained in importance. Meyer and
Peng (2005), exploring 218 articles from 13 top journals, found that CEE research had
particularly highlighted the importance of contextual influences and detected the
limitations of classic organizational economics theories in a highly volatile
environment to which several of their assumptions do not apply. Wright, Filatotchev,

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Hoskisson, and Peng (2005) also found institutional theory to have been most
dominant although usually blended with transaction cost economics, resource-based
view, or agency theory. Soulsby and Clark (2007) argued that particularly higher
context approaches such as comparative institutionalism, organizational learning, and
organizational change could have made some major contributions to organization
theory and, the other way round, were enriched by more finely grained research in the
field. Gelbuda, Meyer and Delios (2008) also identified that scholarly studies about
CEE management problems increasingly employed institutional perspectives, namely
institutional economics and sociology-grounded institutional theory. This was also
stressed in the review by Puffer and McCarthy (2011) that explicitly claimed to use
“an institutional theory perspective”.
Regarding the topics explored in CEE management research, Banaj (1994)
mentioned that the penetration and settlement of foreign firms in CEE and the HRM
methods used in those countries seemed to be the most attractive topics (in the early
years). Wright, Filatotchev, Hoskisson, and Peng (2005), who particularly focused on
strategy research, found that scholars were mostly interested in firms from developed
economies entering emerging economies and domestic firms competing within
emerging economies, while strategies of firms from emerging economies entering other
emerging economies or entering developed economies were not analyzed with the same
intensity. Taking a more general view, Steger and Lang (2011) stated organizational
change, followed by corporate strategy, managerial behavior, and HRM, to be the most
widely explored topic throughout the time since 1990.
Those reviews, indeed, need to be critically re-considered with respect to our topic:
Some authors (e.g. Puffer & McCarthy, 2011) have predominantly summarized the
contents of Russian business and management research without going any deeper into
the studies examined. Among those, who have taken a closer look at the studies, the
number of theoretical aspects and theories examined remained limited and some
considerations in this respect were rather normative than descriptive (e.g. Hoskisson et
al., 2000). Methodological and methodical aspects of management research were hardly
discussed and the importance of the role of scientific paradigms has been widely
ignored. With one exception (Meyer & Peng, 2005), the reviews did neither cover a
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Images of Central and Eastern Europe

systematic analysis of a major sample of publications in the field nor did they examine
in more detail the developments throughout the years. Moreover, the authors of those
reviews often refused to take a critical position towards the production process of
scientific knowledge. Against this backdrop, it hardly comes as a surprise that the
presence and function of images, stereotypes and culturally conditioned outside
perspectives on CEE have not yet been reflected as factors of knowledge production by
practitioners in the field of in IB theory and practice.
Obviously, it is necessary to broaden our focus here, i.e. to look at the findings of
scholars

from

non-management

disciplines:

The

study

of

perceptions

and

representations of foreign countries, nations, cultures and regions is a classic topic of
intellectual history and literary studies that has generated a multitude of monographs
and articles so great that we cannot document it here (for a bibliographical
systematization cf. Hoffmann 1986, 2008). Even if we narrow it down to CEE
countries, there are numerous studies dealing with the images of Russia, Poland,
Hungary and other CEE countries of individual authors, travelers, and intellectuals from
different European and non-European countries. In addition, the images of CEE
countries in foreign media and public opinion have been investigated into for different
countries and historical periods. There are, however, only few studies that
systematically analyze Western perceptions of post-Communist CEE. If we just take
German images of Russia at the turn of the 21st century, the studies of Antonina
Zykova, Varvarra Degtjarova, Stella Gavrilova, and Katrin Seifert have analyzed the
representation and construction of Russia in the newspapers and television (Zykova
2014; Degtjarova 2007; Gavrilova 2005; Seifert 2003). Furthermore, some collected
volumes of a more general nature, thematizing different aspects of the images of Russia
currently circulating in Germany have been published (Lobkowicz 2008; Krumm,
Medvedev & Schröder 2012). A similar situation can be assessed for images of other
CEE countries in Germany and other Western European countries. The classical text
genres analyzed in this context, however, are travel accounts and literary texts,
newspaper and magazine articles or television broadcasts. Nobody in the field of
cultural studies and literary criticism has looked at the images of CEE countries
circulating in managerial discourses so far.
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All of the above suggests that further research focusing on the role of perceptions
and stereotypes in intercultural encounters and the problem of intercultural learning is
obviously needed in order to gain more intimate knowledge about how management
research on CEE countries has developed throughout the past two decades, and what
this has meant for corporate leadership, governance and CSR.

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Images of Central and Eastern Europe

4. Methods
Drawing on a systematic close reading of all relevant articles (42) published in three
leading management journals since 1990 (Academy of Management Executive, Academy
of Management Journal, and European Management Journal – see complete list of
articles in the annex), the paper analyzes the images of Central and Eastern Europe
circulating in the business community at the turn of the twenty-first century and their
relevance for corporate leadership, governance and CSR in the very CEE context. It
tries to identify their central elements and recurring patterns, investigates their
communicative functions in the larger identity-defining discourses of the day, and
unearths the key concepts of IB theory and practice written into the scenarios about
CEE and its future.
In dealing with the articles closely read, we have (a) systematically identified
metaphors used to represent and frame the situation in CEE, (b) reconstructed the
discursive interconnectedness of individual statements about CEE ‘realities’ to distil
the strands of the major narratives on CEE, and (c) traced the narratives identified to
the core values and key concepts of IB theory that generated and shaped these
discourses in the first place. In all, therefore, we have excavated the subtexts
underneath the surface level of the scholarly articles, always asking what else Western
managers were talking about when they were talking about CEE. The overall
approach, therefore, is to reconstruct the communicative function of the images by
way of “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) and discursive contextualization of
individual statements.
As such, the approach of the paper is thoroughly interdisciplinary as it joins two
scholars from different disciplines together: The first author is a trained historian
and professor of American Studies, who has done a lot of work on the perception of
the United States in Europe and on problems of cultural transfer. The second author
holds the chair in the area of management. His research interests mainly focus on
corporate governance and management issues, particularly in the transitioning
countries of CEE.

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5. Findings
Our analysis results in four major patterns that characterize the very nature of
management research about CEE throughout the past two and a half decades. Hereafter,
we describe each pattern in more detail and illustrate them with some concrete quotes
from the articles explored.

5.1 The Self and the Other
The managerial discourses analyzed tend to construct CEE as a cultural entity, the very
unity of which being defined by a shared Communist past. Written into this construction
of CEE as a coherent, even monolithic culture area originating in the Communist
experience is a concept of the West as a community of values forged by natural rights
individualism, liberal democracy, and free-market capitalism. As a result, the mental
maps discursively drawn in the managerial debates are structured by binary oppositions
centering in ‘us-versus-them’-patterns that identify ‘the West’ and CEE as two distinct
culture areas with two mutually exclusive ways of life. As Ivancevich, DeFrank, and
Gregory (1992) write,
“[a] people who have lived through the icon, axe, hammer, and sickle, will have difficulty
and frustration adjusting to a world of democracy, free enterprise, and risk-taking
decision making.” (Ivancevich, DeFrank, & Gregory, 1992: 54)

The concept of CEE culture transported in these discourses appears as rather holistic.
‘Irresponsibility,’ ‘collectivism,’ ‘inactivity.’ and ‘stasis’ are represented as the
dominant attitudes of CEE ways of life. The notion of CEE culture being “collectivist”
surfaces time and again in the articles we have analyzed (Bruton & Rubanik, 1997: 73;
May, Stewart, & Sweo, 2000: 420; Mueller & Clarke, 1998: 326), and this formula of
collectivism serves to explain the phenomena, behavioral patterns and business
practices that Western managers encounter in CEE countries. Mueller & Clarke (1998:
322) thus speak of a “sociopolitical environment” in post-Communist Russia “that
subordinates individual interests to the collective welfare”. Explicitly tracing the
“collectivistic culture” in Eastern Europe to the historical experience of Socialism, they
highlight that
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“people in the Central and Eastern European countries tended to be more socially or
externally oriented, and that those in the United States and other Western countries
tended to be more individually or internally oriented.” (Mueller & Clarke, 1998: 322)

In a larger context, this difference between CEE collectivism and Western
individualism is frequently based on a conceptual framework that links ‘traditionalism’,
‘backwardness’ and ‘irrationality’ to Central and Eastern Europe, while it defines ‘the
West’ as ‘modern’, ‘progressive’ and ‘rational’. This mental map surfaces in all
desirable clarity in Snejina Michailova’s article entitled “Contrasts in Culture: Russian
and Western Perspectives on Organizational Change,” in which she writes:
“Whereas efficiency, predictability, professionalism, and modernity are seen as key
forces for rationality in the West, belief in fate and destiny reflect an underlying faith in
the Russian context. While a professionally oriented and modern Western society
provides little room for traditions and regards them as slowing down progress, Russians
tend to value them very highly. They perceive the future orientation and focus on action
and achievement in the Western context as not very appropriate, and admire history and
traditions instead.” (Michailova, 2000: 106)

Inseparably connected to the binary opposition of the ‘us-versus-them,’ is a deficitdiscourse that reflects CEE business cultures in terms of what they lack in light of
Western standards. The topical scope of these deficiency-statements is wide and varied,
ranging from institutional and political circumstances to mentalities and culturally
forged predispositions.
“In Central and Eastern Europe, privatization is challenged by the absence of efficient
capital markets, and a lack of entrepreneurial and managerial skills” (Uhlenbruck & de
Castro, 2000: 381).

May et al. (2000) stress that
“Bulgarian managers underutilized certain information resources because they lacked the
knowledge necessary to handle complex business documentation and management
information systems” (May et al., 2000: 407).

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Meanwhile Earle, Spicer, and Peter (2010) argue that
“one factor in the spread of wage arrears in the Russian case was likely the relative lack
of labor mobility across communities, which limited the opportunities of Russian workers
to escape deviant organizational practices.” (Earle et al., 2010: 234)

Hitt, Dacin, Levitas, Arregle, and Borza (2000: 463), finally, see the “the lack of
financial capital and the lack of infrastructure to provide access to capital” as a “major
deficit” in Poland and Romania. From these multi-layered deficit discourses result the
many suggestions for what needs to be done to help CEE economies. Shama (1993), for
example, sees the necessary development in CEE countries leading
“from little or no competition to more competition; from little or no management control
over marketing mix decisions to more control of such decisions; from little planning to
more planning” (Shama, 1993: 24).

The effect of this discourse on deficits, which implicitly sets the Western businesses
practices as a norm and takes them for granted, is to frame the encounter between
Western management and CEE business practices in terms of a “clash of cultures.” This
discourse produces some very strong metaphors, suggesting that
“[m]ost of the managerial values developed during the Soviet period, and their attendant
attitudes and behaviors” were “antithetical to Western management practices” (May,
Puffer, & McCarthy, 2005: 26).

Against this backdrop, it becomes clear why the transfer of Western knowledge to
CEE countries is sometimes described as a “battle of wills” or a “mental combat” (May
et al., 2005: 33)
Only rather slowly some ‘shades of grey’ are identified, with some authors starting to
become aware of the cultural and historical diversity within the supposedly monolithic
sphere of Central and Eastern Europe. McNulty (1992: 80) thus speaks of “Eastern
Europe’s many cultures”, while Luthans and Riolli (1997) state that
“each of the former Communist countries is quite different, and the reasons for the
successes and failures are varied and complex, involving historical, cultural, political and
even geographical issues” (Luthans & Riolli, 1997: 71).

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Images of Central and Eastern Europe

However, these voices stressing the diversity within CEE are rather marginal in the
debates we have looked at for this paper. This has something to do with the overall lack
of knowledge and understanding of the situations, contexts, and processes in post-cold
war CEE. Stating this relative ignorance about Central and Eastern Europe, interestingly
enough, is one of the formative factors of the managerial discourses on CEE.
“The world in general and Western scholars and managers specifically know very little
about Soviet management styles.” (Ivancevich et al., 1992: 43)

Shama even states that “[o]ur knowledge of management behavior during this
transformation is scant and anecdotal” (Shama, 1993: 23). This admission of
ignorance, however, is conceptually linked to the construction of CEE as a cultural
entity forged by the experience of Socialism, which lets CEE not only appear as a
‘different’ but as a ‘foreign,’ and even ‘exotic’ world that Western managers seem to
entering as ‘intruders from a different planet’.

5.2 Certainty vs. Uncertainty
Another major discursive strand in the articles read is a complex relationship of
certainty and uncertainty. Most authors thematize multitude of aspects about CEErealities, in which a ubiquitous ambiguity and insecurity about the present and the past
in CEE becomes manifest.
Initially, and particularly in the articles of the early 1990s, the changes in CEE were
perceived as tumultuous and disruptive, even as unbelievable and indescribable.
Usually, people in similar situations tend to use metaphors to express what they have in
mind but cannot express in ‘dry’ language (Geertz, 1973). This is well visible in many
articles of that time. Pearce (1991: 77) conjures up the image of an “avalanche of
change” in CEE, while Shaw, Fisher, and Randolph (1991: 11) argue that “worlds have
been turned upside down” (Shaw et al. 1991: 11). Even several years later, Luthans and
Riolli (1997) tried to describe what they have seen and experienced in Albania not with
some abstract facts and figures but with the help of an image reminiscent of an auto
graveyard.

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“[Communism in Albania] has been ripped down, broken into bits and carted away. This
ravaged country is recycling itself out of the rubble.” (Luthans & Riolli, 1997: 61)

At the same time, this representation of the past and present changes as disruptive
and beyond control is inseparably linked to some explicit certainties derived from
supposed historical necessities and economic rules (‘natural laws’). Betraying an
essentially deterministic approach to a historically open situation, Western managers
assumed that certain developments would take place more or less automatically.
“[C]ompetitive pressures compel firms to produce goods at higher quality levels” (Forker,
1991: 71).
“As the economic system matures it is expected that the connection between ownership
and management of the firm will change manager’s attitudes toward workers and
excessive staffing” (Bruton & Rubanik, 1997: 73).

In a situation of widespread uncertainty and openness this determinism provided both
authors and readers with orientation, a ‘red line’ so to speak that guaranteed to turn an
open-ended transformation into a more clearly defined transition process with a clear
target or final state. It is taken-for-granted by almost all authors that this ‘end of history’
cannot be anything but free-market capitalism in a liberal democracy. This becomes
obvious in the managerial treatment of those CEE countries that have supposedly
already started to go exactly this way.
“Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland have been using drastic means to move their
countries from planned political and economic systems into systems of political
democracy and market economy.” (Shama, 1993: 25)

Moreover, this strict determinism eliminated the (potential) fear of a return to
Socialism that existed even among experts at that time, in particular after the revolt of the
‘old guards’ in the Soviet Union in the summer of 1991. As Ivancevich et al. (1992: 45)
put it, “there is no way for the Soviet Union to turn back. This is important.”
In all, therefore, while the managerial discourses betrayed a sense of uncertainty about
what was going on in CEE, they were at the same time certain that the final outcome of
the changes underway was free-market capitalism and liberal democracy. To reach this
‘final state’ of history, many authors advocated substantial market reforms in a short
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Images of Central and Eastern Europe

period of time, which was time and again framed in terms of “shock therapy”.
Accordingly, the necessity for many different key measures (e.g., privatization) to support
and secure this process is stated time and again. This concerns in particular the large range
of political, legal, social and economic reforms that should encourage the introduction and
stabilization of capitalistic institutions and practices that in and by themselves are
perceived as being without any alternative. To quote again Ivancevich et al. (1992):
“As suggested throughout this article, management must be motivated and enthusiastic
about leading the way to competitive free market transactions.” (Ivancevich et al., 1992: 45)
“When and if ... managers are given more opportunities to develop trade relationships, set
prices, and plan their production work, the Soviet system can begin competing in the
world-market place.” (Ivancevich et al., 1992: 51)

Next to this, and even a bit less taken-for-granted, there are several actions and
activities that are normatively postulated and set as indispensable. Here, we also find
several ‘soft’ measures such as developing new products or learning new skills that are
assumed to be necessary under the new conditions.
“[T]here is a long-term need in Russia for deep restructuring, involving enhanced
management skills, extensive capital investment, and new product development” (Wright,
Hoskission, Filatotchev, & Buck, 1998: 75)

Yet, the changes experienced during the 1990s and early 2000s shattered many
expectations and hopes, which produced a high pressure to legitimate Western
standpoints ‘after the fact’. In light of empirical evidence from CEE, Western managers
had to admit that the nature of many processes had not turned out to be automatisms but
that they had numerous ‘unintended consequences’ leading to new problems and
hardships. These very observations and experiences had the potential to seriously
question the initial optimistic expectations regarding the reliability of reforms, the
stability of the new political and economic contexts, and the profitability of joint
ventures and direct investments, and the very premises and convictions they were based
on. As Wright et al. (1998) sadly put it:
“Reformers hoped that the replacement of the state with private owners would introduce
improved structures of corporate governance, which would, in turn, generate new strategies

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resulting in improved performance (…) [however] any restructuring has often been passive,
involving little managerial initiative and much inertia” (Wright et al., 1998: 76, 82)

What was the discursive reaction to this disappointment? The debates did not
question the fundamental concepts and assumptions of IB theory but started to explain
the unexplainable by stressing other reasons for the unexpected turn of events in CEE
countries. In this context, the cultural predispositions and behavioral patterns of CEE
cultures were blamed. What Wright et al. (1998) only hinted at in their quote above was
made more explicit by other authors.
“The inertia of SOEs and the associated mentality of managers have been difficult to
overcome even after privatization.” (Rondinelli & Black, 2000: 87)
”After a period of training, Polish employees in French hypermarkets were expected to
have acquired Western attitudes”, but “[t]he Poles did not seem ready to learn the
knowledge the French had come to transfer.” (Hurt & Hurt, 2005: 38)

These behavioral patterns blocking and hampering the capitalist transformations in
CEE are frequently identified as being centuries old traditions, so that, in the end, the
determinism of culture turns out to be even stronger than the determinism of the ‘natural
laws’ described above.
“[M]any barriers to knowledge transfer can be attributed to specific aspects of Russian culture, values, attitudes, and behaviors that affect managerial practices.” (May et al., 2005: 25)

Thus, in reflecting about what went wrong in CEE, Western managers actually
cemented their certainties and convictions instead of rethinking them, which is why the
discourses on certainty and uncertainty can be considered an illustrative example for the
power of a scholarly paradigm that, once entrenched and hegemonial, is hard if not
impossible to change or modify even in light of empirical evidence.

5.3 Universalism vs. Particularism of Practices
A complex tension between the proclaimed universalism of Western entrepreneurial
practices and their only limited applicability to CEE is one of the driving moments of
the managerial discourses we have investigated. In this context, the deficit-discourse on
CEE business culture as reconstructed above is to a large extent shaped by a normative
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Images of Central and Eastern Europe

ideal of Western entrepreneurship held to be universal, and, thus, apt to work as a role
model for CEE managers on their way to free-market capitalism.
“Like managers in other Central and Eastern European economies, Hungarian managers at
the beginning of the 1990s were also found to be short on initiative and long-term objectives.
Managers in the early phase of a transition tend to be undermotivated from working in a
culture devoid of profit seeking.” (Steensma, Tihanyi, Lyles, & Dhanaraj, 2005: 218)

This assessment is not limited to the upper echelons of the business hierarchies but
also applied to lower level employees, who likewise show little initiative at their
workplace, as Frese, Kring, Soose and Zimpel (1996) drastically describe:
“[S]ecretaries may fail to do a task because they have the wrong telephone number, even
though they could obtain the number form another person. Or blue-collar workers may
wait next to broken machines until a supervisor comes by, instead of looking for him or
her or for a technician who could fix the machines.” (Frese et al., 1996: 37)

These descriptions, moreover, clearly demonstrate that the authors’ perceptions are
ultimately rooted in the paradigm of modernization theory, i.e. in the strong belief that
there is only one development path to free-market capitalism, which the CEE countries
have not fully embarked on, if they have embarked on it at all.
“The bankruptcy of the Communist system and the development towards a market
economy in Central Europe very quickly led business leaders to assume that Western,
globally accepted, and time-tested management practices would be transferred to postsocialist economies as the “one-best-way”. Central European firms would simply have to
catch up.” (Hurt & Hurt, 2005: 36)

Being deeply rooted in the modernization paradigm, many voices in the discourse take
it for granted that Western concepts and ideas can easily be transferred to CEE on a one-toone basis. Since the Western development is seen as defining the road that CEE countries
would have to take, there is little doubt in the managerial discourses that the instruments of
‘Western capitalism’ provide the tools for shaping the developments in CEE.
“Although the debate on whether Western management principles and practices are
applicable in an alien environment is not new, a substantial number of management

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models implicitly assume that Western management approaches and techniques can
easily be transferred across borders.” (Michailova, 2000: 100)

Nevertheless, there are some voices already during the early years of transformation
that openly problematized the proclaimed universalism of Western management
concepts. On the one hand, these voices argued that the conditions in CEE were too
specific and different from the ones in Western countries to allow for a simple transfer
of Western management practices to CEE contexts. This goes hand in hand with an
increasing awareness of the often only limited applicability of those practices to CEE.
“Believing that all Eastern Europe needs is American-style management is a myth.”
(McNulty, 1992: 80)
“Our managers must realize that their way of thinking and doing business just do not
work in Eastern Europe or any other part of the world. Our methods have to be
adapted…” (McNulty, 1992: 87)

On the other hand, several authors refer to the specific cultural embeddedness of
those concepts and practices in the West European or North American managerial
traditions. To transfer them to what is seen as a completely different cultural setting,
they essentially argue, would most probably cause some ‘cultural clashes’.
“Given the fact that previous planning focused heavily on physical volumes and
engineering concepts of efficiency, the new move to a market money-based economy
make costs and profits difficult to understand in many enterprises. Concepts of return on
capital are essentially unknown in most of the member companies.” (Taucher, 1992: 170)

At the same time, however, these same discussants try to explain why people and
businesses in CEE were performing the way they did, and the answers given draw
heavily on cultural determinism, suggesting that commercial failure was a logical, and
by no means a surprising result of the unmodified transfer of Western management
concepts to a CEE setting. This opened the doors to centuries-old stereotypes about
CEE. Although often degrading and even insulting in the eyes of the people concerned,
those stereotypes continue to play an important role in the managerial discussions of
CEE to this very day.

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Images of Central and Eastern Europe

“The requirement of profitability is accepted as the new theory but taken no more
seriously than Stalin’s economics of socialism. Instead of Marx and Lenin the reformed
manager is likely to quote from Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, but in his
heart of hearts he expects to ‘manage’ very much as before – though he would never
admit this, not even to himself.” (Hermann & Hermann, 1990: 288)
“The environment in Russia and Central and Eastern European countries is often
described as traditionally hostile to entrepreneurial activities; in Russia, it was aversive as
far back as the tsarist era” (Puffer & McCarthy, 2001: 29)

This resort to cultural determinism in the quest to explain, why supposedly universal
management concepts and practices did not work that well in CEE, prevents a critical
questioning of the concepts themselves and the very premises they are based on. It is
not the concepts that are wrong but rather the cultural environment of CEE that prevents
Central and Eastern Europeans from appreciating them.

5.4 Knowledge and Learning
Against the backdrop of the widespread assumption that the developments in CEE after
1989 were a historically necessary movement towards free-market capitalism and
democracy, the debate about knowledge and a multitude of different learning/unlearning
activities makes a major part of the managerial discourses. Just to give two striking
examples here:
“[T]he East German system of education and management organisation produced
managers unable to meet the new demands of a market economy in either the old East or
West Germany.” (Randlesome, 1992: 74)
“[M]ost managers were not starting with a tabula rasa, to accomplish real change they had
to go through a process of unfreezing the elements in their backgrounds that inhibited
receptivity to learning market-oriented practices.” (May et al., 2005: 25).

In this context, Western businesses conceived of themselves paternalistically as
educational agents in transitional CEE economies, teaching ‘Western’ business practices
to a ‘foreign’, even ‘hostile’ world.

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“The foreign parent joint-venture relationship can be viewed as a teacher-student
relationship” (Steensma et al., 2005: 219).

In this context, the very ability of Western businesses to serve as ‘teachers’ was
mostly taken for granted; the paternalistic attitudes towards CEE among Western
businesses and managers did not allow for much doubt whether they would actually be
able and ready to teach Central and Eastern Europeans free-market capitalism.
Accordingly, the instruments of management education and training are mostly not
critically assessed either. On the macro level, privatization, competition and
entrepreneurship are perceived as tools to engineer the transition as a kind of a ‘shock
therapy’. On the micro level, the educational discourses demonstrate only little patience
of Western businesses with their CEE-students,
“[t]he trainers found that a combination of carrot and stick was essential to promote
action.” (Hurt & Hurt, 2005: 31),

and there is only little discursive compassion for the CEE-citizens struggling with the
hardships produced by the ‘shock therapies’.
“The so-called shock therapy policies associated with transition to a market economy
have clearly imposed hardships on the citizenry of the Central and Eastern European
countries.” (Mueller & Clarke, 1998: 322)

Interestingly, the managerial discourses constructed CEE as a kind of “laboratory”
for the testing of ‘Western’ theories and concepts, which was to help developing and
deepening Western knowledge about engineering change under adverse conditions.
“During the decade of the 1990s, Russia was a veritable laboratory for observing how
entrepreneurial behavior can spring up in a country with extremely limited experience in,
and a marked disdain for, entrepreneurship.” (Puffer & McCarthy, 2001: 25)

However, these ‘experiments’ partly resulted in some highly ambiguous and even
irritating experiences from a Western perspective.
“A within-subjects experimental design was used to analyze the impacts that three
popular and successful techniques used in U.S. studies had on the performance of
workers in the largest textile factory in the Russian republic of the former Soviet Union.
Two techniques, providing extrinsic rewards and behavioral management, had
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significant, positive effects, but a participative technique led to a decrease in
performance.” (Welsh, Luthans, & Sommer, 1993: 58)

Moreover, as already described above, this transfer of knowledge and teaching/
learning situation is perceived and framed in the discourse as a “battle of wills” or
“mental combat,” in which not only some rather different experience and knowledge
stocks but also some sharply contrasting teaching and learning styles clash.
“Thus, the Agency became a political battlefield where the competing institutional logics
of market rationality and bureaucratic planning collided.” (Tilczik, 2010: 1491)

All this also led to some serious criticisms of Western authors who (self-)critically
diagnosed a deeply rooted misunderstanding about CEE and their citizens, particularly
their managers and employees. In connection with this, Western business men are
sometimes criticized for being blind about the distinctively different cultures and
traditions in CEE.
“Too many American consultants and managers are failing in their efforts in Eastern
Europe by misjudging Europeans’ educational attainments and by ignorance of their life
styles, ways of learning, management and teaching methods, and cultural values.”
(McNulty, 1992: 79)

Yet, these strands of the managerial discourses do not become hegemonic in the
period we have analyzed.
With respect to the construction of managerial knowledge about CEE, some rather
different phases can be identified. Particularly during the early 1990s the articles were
often based on mere anecdotal evidence, carrying traits of ‘eyewitness accounts’. Due to
the widespread knowledge deficit about CEE in Western circles any first-hand
experience with CEE was gratefully welcome and readily accepted as empirical
evidence.
“[T]he presence of ‘state work’ and ‘private work’ in the same company creates powerful
incentives to misuse state resources. I drove for some kilometres behind a large diesel
delivery truck for one of the prominent state-owned enterprises that was towing a small
private car—a very unlikely official business activity. Was the driver using the truck for his
personal business or fulfilling a private contract for the enterprise?” (Pearce, 1991: 83)

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Later on, researchers increasingly began to apply some rather ‘classic’ quantitative
arms-length methods to their study of CEE economies. The studies became more and
more framed along the requirements of international top-tier journals (e.g., strict
methodology, quantitative surveys, and large number of interviews). Also several
prominent scholars can be found among the authors of these studies, while the ‘exotic
outsiders’ became rare. The use of qualitative, critical in-depth studies, however,
continued to lag behind, and increased only slowly during the 2000s. These studies were
also paralleled by a growing plea for comparative cultural studies to explain the above
mentioned ambiguities and irritations relating to the supposed universalism of Western
management concepts and their only limited applicability to CEE economies.

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Images of Central and Eastern Europe

6. Discussion
In our paper we have identified and described four major discursive strands of the
managerial discourses about CEE, and the role images of CEE played in them. It was
also highlighted that these discourses construct both images of CEE and a Western
identity in one and the same discursive operation as concepts of West were present in
almost every statement made about CEE economies. We have also demonstrated how
different concepts and core values of IB theories, such as entrepreneurship,
accountability, initiative, or competition have helped to shape these images and how
they structured the images of CEE circulating in the managerial debates. Last but not
least, it has also become clear that these images have mainly served as arguments to
legitimate the business activities and strategies pursued by Western actors in CEE.
In more general terms, our analysis has also confirmed several important findings in
the past. We found in those discourses a clear dominance of Western authors and
Western arguments as already argued by other scholars (Alt & Lang, 2004; Steger &
Lang, 2011), which only stresses that the processes of knowledge production and
dissemination must be perceived as highly power-driven (Foucault, 1971). As research
was found to have become more scientific but also more classical throughout the two
and a half decades, it mirrors some kind of mimetic processes (DiMaggio & Powell,
1983). Meanwhile, despite of the high dynamism of the transformation processes in
CEE and a clear development path of the methodical and scientific characters of the
studies observed, the overall perspective on CEE has remained rather stable over the
whole period. The business experiences made in CEE during transformation obviously
did not lead to a substantial renegotiation of Western managerial practices, or to a
questioning of the premises and core values upon which they rested. The underlying
concepts of ‘deficits’, ‘backwardness’, and ‘catching up’, derived from modernization
theory, were – and still are – driving much of the debate. Western management concepts
were not thoroughly questioned even in light of contradicting experiences and empirical
evidence. Ironically enough, the very failure of Western business projects in CEE in
many cases served to cement Western certainties about the validity of Western norms
and the deficits of CEE culture.

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Our analysis has several implications both for IB theory and practice. In pointing out
these implications several avenues for future research are also highlighted. Firstly, it
provides a retrospective critical analysis of Western actors’ perceptions of CEE
contexts, analyzing the views of managers, firms, scholarly authors operating in this
part of the world during the immediate post-Cold-War-period, when CEE economies
and societies were undergoing the transition from planned to free-market economies.
This stresses the importance of a historical discourse analysis that looks at the
managerial discussions about CCE as integral parts of the transformation processes in
and by themselves, which can help draw some lessons for academics as well as for
managers and politicians.
Secondly, in reflecting the cultural embeddedness of the managerial metadiscourses
on CEE, the paper critically assesses the widely unquestioned generalizability and
universality of key concepts circulating in IB theory and practice, like, for example,
entrepreneurship, corporate governance, incentives and accountability. These
unquestioned concepts often generated questionable advice to managers and politicians,
evoked misunderstandings and conflicts, and, finally, often resulted in disappointing
performance of CEE businesses. Our analysis, therefore, also urges a critical perspective
on the scientific analysis of transformational processes itself.
Thirdly, in analyzing the images about CEE in managerial discourses from a
metaperspective, the paper problematizes the connection between overall perceptions
and concrete corporate decision-making in CEE contexts. We thus argue that practices
of leadership, corporate governance and CSR are to some extent defined by images
about CEE and its management, while, at the same time, the decisions once taken also
have an influence on the outside view on CEE business and management.
Consequently, future research should dedicate more weight on the key actors, their
attitudes and perceptions as well as their role and impact in transformation processes.
This helps qualifying the traditional concepts of economic rationality, including rational
choice and utility maximizing, in this context.
Fourthly, in identifying deep-rooted and often implicit conflicts resulting from
outside views and the managerial behavior based on them, our analysis also serves to

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identify and reflect the very cultural premises of managerial action and corporate
decision-making that have often been neglected by IB theory and practice in the past. In
analyzing managerial discourses at the turn of the 21st century as a historical
phenomenon that was both an indicator of and factor in processes of corporate
leadership and governance, we may also better comprehend the role of cultural variables
in economic behavior.
Fifthly, the paper identifies language and discourse as one of the currently emerging
topics in IB theory and practice, tying in with recent special issues of prominent
journals in the field such as Organization Studies (Issue 1, 2004), Academy of
Management Review (Issue 4, 2004), Journal of Management Studies (Issue 2, 2014),
or Journal of International Business Studies (Issue 5, 2014).
Regarding implications for practice one may argue that this study is just about some
nice narratives irrelevant to business operations on the ground. This opinion, however,
would be misleading since the discourses observed and discussed here have some farreaching consequences for IB practice. Firstly, the constructions and interpretations
described above are not just held by some scholars removed from this world but rather
represent major features of the mental maps of dominant Western actors in the CEE
field. Since the transformation processes in CEE can be considered a veritable power
game, in which ‘the winner takes all,’ these constructions and interpretations become
highly relevant. Secondly, these dominant views on CEE often lead to some rather
questionable advices to both managers and politicians, for instance regarding what will
automatically happen in CEE in the future, what concepts and instruments should be
used, or how the CEE managers are to be treated. Thirdly, due to the deeply entrenched
hierarchical script (‘the enlightened West’ vs. ‘the dark East’), which most Western
actors have in mind when getting involved with CEE, misunderstandings will inevitably
arise and, most probably, stick. This particularly relates to the ‘real’ intentions and
targets of the different actors, both from the West as well as from the East, involved in
this process. Fourthly, clashes and conflicts are often found to be the ‘logical’
consequence of these perceptions and misperceptions, self-descriptions and external
ascriptions. In most cases, we assume, these are rather hidden conflicts and only seldom
openly expressed and communicated which, in the end, does not make them easier to
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resolve and overcome. Fifthly, images discussed above were often responsible for some
disappointing results and bad performance in the end, as the vicious circle of
misperceptions and prejudices led to wrong assessments about the situation Western
businesses were acting in.
Our paper, of course, also bears some limitations. It is, first of all, still a relatively
small sample of pieces from a wide discourse, and considerable work still needs to be
done in order to refine and strengthen our findings and propositions. Furthermore, one
may question why we have exactly selected this sample and not, for instance, based our
analysis on books or more widespread popular media. Last but not least, our
methodology may be criticized for being rather particular and, thus, focusing more on
the discursive than on the practical level of what is ‘really’ happening in CEE.
Notwithstanding these criticisms, we assume that our paper may contribute to the
discussion about CEE management research by opening up a traditional ‘black box’
and, thus, offering some new insights into a complicated topic.

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Seifert, K. 2003. Die Konstruktion Rußlands in der deutschen Auslandsberichterstattung
1985–1995: Studien zum Wandel der deutschen Wahrnehmung Rußlands. Berlin: wvb.
Soulsby, A., & Clark, E. 2007. Organization theory and the post-socialist transformation:
Contributions to organizational knowledge. Human Relations, 60(10): 1419–1442.
Steger, T. & Lang, R. 2011. More than just Storytelling? Two Decades of Empirical
Management Research on Central and Eastern Europe. Paper presented to the IACCM
Conference in Rousse, Bulgaria.
Wright, M., Filatotchev, I., Hoskisson, R.E., & Peng, M.W. 2005. Strategy research in
emerging economies: Challenging the conventional wisdom. Journal of Management
Studies, 42(1): 1–33.
Zacharasiewicz, W. 2010. Imagology revisited. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Zykova, A. 2014. Zaren, Bären und Barbaren: Das mediale deutsche Russlandbild am
Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts und seine historischen Wurzeln. Herne: Schäfer.

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8. Annex: Article Database (in chronological order)
8.1 Academy of Management Executive (17)
Shaw, J. B., Fisher, C. D., & Randolph, W. A. 1991. From maternalism to accountability:
the changing cultures of Ma Bell and Mother Russia. 5(1): 7–20.
Forker, L. B. 1991. Quality: American, Japanese, and Soviet perspectives. 5(4): 63–74.
Pearce, J. L. 1991. From socialism to capitalism; the effects of Hungarian human resources
practices. 5(4): 75–88.
Ivancevich, J. M., DeFrank, R. S., & Gregory, P. R. 1992. The Soviet enterprise director: an
important resource before and after the coup. 6(1): 42–55.
McNulty, N. G. 1992. Management education in Eastern Europe: ‘fore and after. 6(4): 78–87.
Shama, A. 1993. Management under fire: The transformation of managers in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe. 7(1): 22–35.
Puffer, S. M. 1994. Understanding the bear: A portrait of Russian business leaders. 8(1): 41–54.
Bruton, G. D. & Rubanik, Y. T. 1997. Turnaround of high technology firms in Russia: The
case of Micron. 11(2): 68–79.
Luthans, F. & Riolli, L.T. 1997. Albania and the Bora Company: Lessons learned before the
recent chaos. 11(3): 61–72.
Wright, M., Hoskisson, R. E., Filatotchev, I., & Buck, T. 1998. Revitalizing privatized
Russian Enterprises. 12(2): 74–85.
Rondinelli, D. A. & Black, S. S. 2000. Multinational strategic alliances and acquisitions in
Central and Eastern Europe: Partnerships in privatization. 14(4): 85–98.
Michailova, S. 2000. Contrasts in culture: Russian and Western perspectives on
organizational change. 14(4): 99–112.
Puffer, S. M. & McCarthy, D. J. 2001. Navigating the hostile maze: A framework for
Russian entrepreneurship. 15(4): 24–36.
Doh, J. P., Rodriguez, P., Uhlenbruck, K., Collins, J., & Eden, L. 2003. Coping with
corruption in foreign markets. 17(3): 114–127.
May, R. C., Puffer, S. M., & McCarthy, D. J. 2005. Transferring management knowledge to
Russia: A culturally based approach. 19(2): 24–35.
Hurt, M. & Hurt, S. 2005. Transfer of managerial practices by French food retailers to
operations in Poland. 19(2): 36–49.
Farrell, D., Laboissière, M. A., & Rosenfeld, J. 2006. Sizing the emerging global labor
market: Rational behavior from both Companies and countries can help it work more
efficiently. 20(4): 23–34.

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8.2 Academy of Management Journal (12)
Welsh, D. H. B., Luthans, F., & Sommer, S. M. 1993. Managing Russian factory workers:
The impact of U.S.-based behavioral and participative techniques. 36(1): 58–79.
Frese, M., Kring, W., Soose, A., & Zempel, J. 1996. Personal initiative at work: Differences
between East and West Germany. 39(1): 37–63.
Mueller, S. L. & Clarke, L. D. 1998. Context and sensitivity to equity: Differences between the
United States and the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe. 41(3): 319–329.
Filatotchev, I., Buck, T., & Zhukov, V. 2000. Downsizing in privatized firms in Russia,
Ukraine, and Belarus. 43(3): 286–304.
Uhlenbruck, K. & de Castro, J. O. 2000. Foreign acquisitions in Central and Eastern
Europe: Outcomes of privatization in transitional economies. 43(3): 381–402.
May, R. C., Stewart, W. H., & Sweo, R. 2000. Environmental scanning behavior in a
transitional economy: Evidence from Russia. 43(3): 403–427.
Hitt, M. A., Dacin, M. T., Levitas, e., Arregle, J.-L., & Borza, A. 2000. Partner selection in
emerging and developed market contexts: Resource-based and organizational learning
perspectives. 43(3): 449–467.
Spicer, A., Dunfee, T. W., & Bailey, W. J. 2004. Does national context matter in ethical
decision making? An empirical test of integrative social contracts theory. 47(4): 610–620.
Steensma, H. K., Tihanyi, L., Lyles, M. A., & Dhanaraj, C. 2005. The evolving value of
foreign partnerships in transitioning economies. 48(2): 213–235.
Bailey, W. & Spicer, A. 2007. When does national identity matter? Convergence and divergence in international business ethics. 50(6): 1462–1480.
Earle, J. S., Spicer, A., & Sabirianova Peter, K. 2010. The normalization of deviant
organizational practices: Wage arrears in Russia, 1991–98. 53(2): 218–237.
Tilcsik, A. 2010. From ritual to reality: Demography, ideology, and decoupling in a postcommunist government agency. 53(6): 1474–1498.

8.3 European Management Journal (13)
Hermann, A. H. & Hermann, M. 1990. Eastern and Central Europe: Opportunities and problems. 8(3): 287–290.
Kaser, M. 1990. The East European economies in transition. 8(3): 291–295.
Seddon, J. 1990. Privatization in Eastern Europe. 8(4): 500–508.
Zloch-Christy, I. 1990. Political risk assessment in lending to Eastern Europe. 8(4): 509–513.
Hünerberg, R. 1990. Risk and opportunities in Eastern Europe. 8(4): 514–519.
Manoukovsky, A. 1991. The outlook for Soviet business schools. 9(2): 182–185.
Rogers, P. & Matthews, P. 1991. Western quality at a low price: Cleaning-up in Poland?
9(4): 425–432.

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Cummings, T., Boshyk,Y., & Martin, C. 1992. DINA Yugoslavia 1990: Case study search
for a foreign partner. 10(1): 60–73.
Randlesome, C. 1992. East German managers: From Karl Marx to Adam Smith. 10(1): 74–79.
Taucher, G. 1992. The making of the new Russian Chief Executive. 10(2): 169–172.
Beamish, P. 1992. Russki Adventures. 10(4): 465–476.
Collins, R. S. 1993. Sony in Poland: A case study. 11(1): 46–54.
Vikhanski, O., Puffer, S. M. 1993. Management education and employee twining at Moscow
McDonald’s. 11(1): 102–107.

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